


The Mountains are Singing

by SuperKat



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperKat/pseuds/SuperKat
Summary: Jane has spent her first term at Cambridge University pouring over old manuscripts and translations, chasing down ancient myths and legends and something else she cannot identify. It's in her dreams, haunting her, calling to her.Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu, ac y mae’r arglwyddes yn dod.





	The Mountains are Singing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/gifts).



Every time the dreams returned, they lingered for days. Jane would wander for hours at a time in a sort of fog, images and sounds circling her consciousness: old-fashioned boats and hawthorn branches, an old woman with a rose on her finger, a tall man silhouetted on a mountain top.  She would try to identify the voices that whispered to her, always achingly familiar but just beyond her reach.   

Simon made fun of her for it, from time to time.  So did their parents.  Barney never did; then again, Jane sometimes suspected that he went through similar episodes.  They never talked about it.  Sometimes the mocking made things better, but usually it had the opposite effect.  Still, Jane missed Simon when he left for Uni.  Somehow in his absence, whatever she had been searching for felt further from her grasp than ever.

It was something of a relief to start fresh in a city where everything was new and unfamiliar.  Christ’s College was small and quiet, without the crowds of tourists that flocked King’s but close enough to city center that Jane could justify a walk to the market every now and again.  Simon, in London, was only 45 minutes away by train (more if she counted the Underground), but somehow they never found the time to visit.  Instead, Jane spent her first term buried in books and old texts, drawn in particular to Medieval Welsh for reasons she could not explain. The Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic program seemed specially designed with her in mind, and sometimes she almost believed it was.

The first time Jane had the dream at Uni, she spent most of the morning in the library with an Old English manuscript open in front of her.  After staring at the same paragraph for nearly an hour, Jane gave up on productivity and took a long walk along the river.

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny with a light breeze brushing the edge of the Cam. Jane took a circular route around the green, absently watching the tourist-laden gondolas drift past. Here and there a tour guide, often a Uni student, always wearing that ridiculous uniform, punted with a particular finesse while shouting trivia about the history of the city or its University.

Jane paused by a willow tree, watching a harried-looking tourist attempt, and fail, to keep a small gondola on the correct side of the river while the two women in the boat shouted advice at him.  The bow of a larger boat, steered by an older man in a tour guide uniform, clipped the tourists’ boat, the force of the collision pivoting the smaller gondola almost half-way round.  The tour guide freed the larger boat, grumbling, “Stay on your side of the river, mate.”

“Yes,” the tourist shouted over his shoulder through gritted teeth, “ _Thank you_ for the advice.”  The women in the boat giggled behind their hands.

Jane looked away just in time to glimpse another gondola, another long one, steered by a boy who looked strikingly familiar.  Jane’s breath caught in her chest when he made eye-contact with her.  He was somewhat stocky, with a round face and a mop of mouse-brown hair.  He seemed surprised to see her.  After a moment that seemed to stretch for hours, the boat vanished round the bend and Jane stared after it, suddenly terrified for reasons she could not explain.  She knew that boy.  She _knew_ him. How did she know him? 

She had seen him once before, at the start of term. She’d been visiting The Round Church with some other First-Years as part of their induction, and she caught sight of him with a different group.  They had made eye contact briefly, Jane with the sudden, inexplicable certainty that she had known him once.  At the time, she couldn't tell if he felt the same, but now she felt sure he had.

Jane thought about the boy for almost the entire walk back to her flat, but it wasn’t until later, skimming through a translation about Idris Gawr, that she had a flash of recognition, a long-forgotten memory rising to the surface so suddenly that she gasped.  She _had_ seen that boy before, years ago, on holiday.  Twice, in fact: she and Simon and Barney had spent a week with him in Cornwall and then another few days with him in North Wales. How had she forgotten?

Will was his name.  Will…something. Jane felt a flash of memory: standing with him on a hilltop on a gray, misty day as the wind whipped their hair around their faces.  They’d taken a walk along a beautiful ridge with long stretching views of the mountains and a river delta.  There had been something about King Arthur too, though she remembered Barney’s excitement more clearly than anything else.  There was a lake too, or a pond? Her memory cut off there, faded into nothingness in a familiar and infuriating sort of way.  Why couldn’t she remember? They hadn’t been _that_ young at the time.  She had memories of primary school that were perfectly clear, yet those holidays were caked in some sort of fog, faded and fragmented, with gaps that made no sense.

How had they known Will? He wasn’t connected to their family, so it must have been something else.  He had been related to – or somehow friends with –

Great Uncle Merry.

Not for the first time, the memory of her not-actually-related Great Uncle rose through Jane’s consciousness, carrying an almost physical pain.  She missed him terribly; even all these years later the image of his deep-set eyes, twinkling with a rare flash of amusement, was enough to bring her to tears.  His death had been so sudden, so unsatisfactory, that even now it didn’t feel real.  There had been a memorial service at Christ Church in Oxford, with what seemed like half the population of Britain and more from all over the world. Yet, even years later, it was difficult to believe that Great Uncle Merry wouldn’t simply show up one day with a fascinating set of stories from God-knew-where. Jane longed to tell him about her acceptance into Cambridge, often wondering what he would have thought of her course of study.  What interesting conversations they could have had.

Jane bit her lip, swallowed hard, and forced herself to return to her reading.

 

* * *

 

The second time she had the dream at Uni, alarmingly soon after the first one, Jane slogged through her lectures in a near-catatonic daze, then took a long aimless walk through the city, her thoughts twirling and tumbling over themselves, her mental fog so thick that she nearly collided with tourists several times.  Returning to her room, Jane opened a book at near-random and found herself looking once again at the story of Idris Grawr and his mountain-seat in North Wales.  

_I should take a holiday there._

The idea rose through her consciousness with a sort of inevitability, her conviction so strong that Jane wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. Cader Idris, with its multiple peaks and panoramic views and quiet, crystalline lakes, gripped her with a fascination that was refreshingly removed from any maddening sense of familiarity. Tal-y-llyn sounded beautiful, Llyn Cau intriguing.

Over the next several weeks, Jane spent most of her free time pouring over guidebooks and making phone calls and inquiries by post as needed. She managed to book a room at a hostel in a tiny village not far from Cader Idris.  She would spend the first week of her Easter holiday there, hiking and exploring some of the places that she had been reading about for several months.  She would have to do the same for Cornwall, she decided, maybe at Easter holiday next year. The very idea of visiting these places felt so satisfying, so…right, that it quelled some of the aching frustration inside of her.  Jane threw herself into her essays and earned top marks in nearly everything.

For reasons she could not identify, when Jane wrote to her family to tell them her Easter plans, she did not say a word about the boy Will.

 

* * *

 

Fog blanketed the Dyssyni valley in the morning when Jane started her ascent of Cader Idris.  She didn't mind it; the thick white mist gave everything a mystical, otherworldly feeling that she enjoyed. It started to burn off as she climbed, but when Jane turned to look behind her, she could see the last breaths of it hanging over the ancient hills like some kind of ghostly veil.  Fitting, really.  She felt like a foreigner here; not an intruder but a guest, invited for a glimpse into something older and more powerful than anything imaginable by humankind. 

 _Not twenty minutes on Cader and I’m already a poet,_ Jane thought with a wry smile as she continued her ascent.  

It was a pleasant climb, that first leg, winding steeply up the mountainside through low brush, with the hills of lower Snowdownia stretching farther and farther out behind her.  The air was peaceful, quiet, with only the occasional twitter of birds echoing across the open slopes. 

It wasn't until Jane rounded the bend at the top of the first slope, where the opening into the crater of Cader Idris loomed in front of her, that she first felt a sense of forboding creep down her spine.  The trail flattened here, and as she walked through the opening between peaks, Jane felt the air grow still and the silence enfold her. She caught sight of the first sliver of Llyn Cau’s still, dark water and shivered suddenly, though the air had been steadily warming and there was no breeze.

Something was here, she understood. Something empty and abandoned.  Something with the power to turn humans into poets or drive them mad, yet powerless, in a way.  A shell of whatever it had once been.

Something dark.

 _Maybe it’s not a poet I’m becoming after all,_ Jane thought, shrugging her shoulders and slipping her hands into her pockets.  _Definitely not spending the night up here._

The air grew thicker and more oppressive as Jane wound between barren slopes, watching the far side of the crater loom ever higher in front of her.  The trail started to follow a dark trickling stream, which could only be flowing from Llyn Cau. Jane became aware of a low rumbling, a constant buzz in the air that she was sure had something to do with sound reverberation but felt like nothing of this world.  Try as she might, Jane could not shake the sense that she was walking into the lair of something evil.

The trail forked just before the crater lake. The left branch would soon start start to climb Cader's first peak, circling around the lip of the crater until it reached Penygadair, the mountain's highest point.  Jane would have to take this path eventually.  The branch going straight was narrower, with brush hanging over the edges.  It descended gradually to the very edge of Llyn Cau. 

Jane stood for a moment, fear prickling at the edges of her consciousness.  There was something _here._ Something she had known, or known _of_ , once.  Something as unreachable as all those other images, the massive oak tree, a rushing roar, the warm flash of bronze in her hand, a circle quartered by a cross…

Nothing made sense. Jane grit her teeth and screwed up her features in an attempt to pull something –anything – solid from the foggy jumble of sights and sounds and smells.  Still it eluded her, leaving only the sense of something monumentous just beyond her reach.  Without realizing it, Jane grunted aloud and stomped her foot.  Something was _there,_ she knew it.  The smell of hawthore leaves. A woman underwater, with hair like seaweed drifting with the current. The sound of waves crashing in an underground tunnel.  Peace.  A shining gift. A different smell, overpowering, something long dead and rotten. Fear of something impossible. Something so malodorous that the faintest echo of a memory triggered a wave of nausea.  The fear grew, and Jane seized it.  There was something _here,_ something powerful, something she _knew._ A pale pink glow, the sound of a melody she knew but didn’t…Greensleeves?  No. That wasn’t right.

As little as she could gather from the farthest reach of her memory, Jane understood that if she didn’t at least approach Llyn Cau for a closer look, she would have accomplished nothing of what she came to Wales to do.  ( _Which is what_   _exactly?_ she found herself wondering. Somehow that didn’t matter.) She might very well regret it for the rest of her life.

There was nothing in or on the small lake.  No fish, no insects, not a ripple except where the reeds shifted at the water's edge. The silence here was all-encompassing, and Jane found herself transfixed by the dark surface as smooth and still as glass.  Her fingertips brushed it, and the water shocked her with its cold.

_There you are._

Jane jumped back as if electrocuted, stumbling over some rocks and landing on her backside on the soft bank. Her insides whirled with the sense of being _seen,_ being _recognized._ Something loomed in her memory; something massive and dark and impossible, with a slimy iridescent glow and festering smell of rot and hatred.  With the mental image came the first tangible memory of a voice, the first words she was sure she recognized.

_My father banished you to Llyn Cau._

It was a boy’s voice, younger than she was yet ageless somehow.  Jane clung to the sound, but it faded as the others had, like water seeping into dry sand. What remained was the knowledge that something was _here_. Something had been banished here, imprisoned in this crater lake on this ancient mountain.  And it _knew her_.

The water at the far side of the lake started to churn.  It started as a low ripple and grew into a boiling whirlpool opening at the surface like some horrible flower.  With it came the stench, faint at first but _real._ She knew this smell, not just from a dream. She could _feel_ it every time she inhaled, the stench stinging her tongue and causing the world to tilt underneath her.  Jane could neither move nor scream. She could only gape as the breach at the surface grew, sending ripples that sloshed at her edge of the lake with a sound that made her jump.  A scream caught in her throat.

Wildly, desperately, unsure of what else to do, Jane started to hum the few lines of melody that she’d heard over and over in her dreams.  Her voice was an unsteady mezzo-soprano, and she knew she had parts of it wrong, but she hummed it anyway.  The churning didn’t slow, but her nerves steadied and the dizziness began to fade.  Jane took a breath, and as she continued humming she felt the strangest sensation that someone was standing behind her, someone old and powerful, guiding her through the music, their voices blending so as to be indistinguishable from one powerful voice humming a tune it had always known.

Footsteps in the brush behind her, quick, frantic.  Jane heard two voices but did not stop her humming.  She would not be distracted from this.  Let them think her mad, if it came to it.

The first person to reach the water's edge was man not much older than she was, with dark clothes and shoulder-length white hair drifting as if in a light breeze.  Jane could not see his face until he turned to look over his shoulder.  His skin was exceptionally pale, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. 

"You said they were supposed to be gone!” His voice was unmistakably Welsh, his tone was gruff and angry.  Jane kept humming because she didn’t know what else to do.

Another voice, this one English and breathier, as if panting.  “They were.  This is just scraps.  Unneeded bits, left behind.  It’s what they do.”

That voice.  When the second young man stepped into her line of vision, Jane jumped and very nearly lost the melody.  She redoubled her efforts, however, the voice within her stronger than ever. Whatever was in the water had not yet emerged, and if her humming was doing anything to slow it down, she would keep it up as long as possible.  Even if Will from University, the Will she had known years go but could barely remember, was watching her sing.

To her surprise, the Welsh boy turned to her with an almost-smile.  “Jane Drew." He greeted her like they were old friends who had been apart for a long time. "Will reckoned we’d find you here, though to be honest I only just believe him now.”

She knew him.  He knew her.  Bran.  This boy was Bran.  He’d gone walking with them and Will along the hills near Aberdyfi. How had she forgotten him?

“Keep singing,” said Will.  “I can help you drive it back, but that song was never meant for me.” 

Bran was starting to circle the edge of the lake, his gaze fixed, as far as she could tell behind his dark glasses, on the far side.  “Will it help if I address it?”

“Not anymore,” said Will.  Bran grunted in frustration, clenching his fists and thumping at his side.  Nothing made sense.  They knew something that she didn’t, that much was clear...and strangely familiar.  Had it been like this on their holiday? Even if she could stop her humming to ask – which she didn’t dare – Jane wasn’t entirely sure they would answer her.  Something about this was infuriating, but she focused on her song, forcefully ignoring everything else.

Something started to grow through the brush on her right side.  A single vine, brighter green than anything else at this altitude so early in the season, wound its way from the ground, around and across and between twigs and dry brush, until it emerged into open air with a single bulb that was rapidly turning a beautiful shade of dark pink.  Jane watched it, still humming.  The bulb expanded, split at the top end and burst open, the largest, most flawless rose blossom she had ever seen. 

Will crouched beside her.  “Take it,” he whispered.  “It’s yours.”

Still humming, Jane fumbled in her rucksack for her pocket knife.  She had bought it for the trip, just in case, but had not expected to actually need it.  She gripped the underside of the bulb and started to cut through the stem.  A thorn pricked her hand and she gasped, the melody breaking. Instantly, the surface of the lake shattered, upwards and outwards, and something enormous and rotten and _impossible_ loomed over them, fangs dripping warm, dark water onto the rocks.

The melody long gone, bile rising in her throat, Jane sawed at the stem as the creature snarled and snapped, growled and raged.  It ignored Bran and paid cursory attention to Will.  _You don’t have that kind of dominion anymore. You and your kind saw to that._ What it wanted, mainly, was her.

_Give it up.  You are nothing.  They left you for that just as mine left me. What you are searching for cannot be found because it no longer exists.  You are abandoned.  You are NOTHING._

Jane grunted, tears stinging her eyes.  She hesitated, feeling warm darkness envelop her for a split second, before she redoubled her efforts.  The knife finally broke through the tough fibers in the stem, nearly slicing her finger with the force of it.  Jane dropped the pocketknife and gripped the rose in both hands, pushing herself upright on unsteady feet and holding the blossom as high above her head as she could.

 _You forget, Afanc._ The words floated to the surface of her consciousness, her voice and not hers the same time.  Later, Jane would never be sure if she had actually said anything aloud.  It didn’t matter. _You are foolish to forget the Wild Magic.  Your Grey King and all of his kind have left you, but we will be here.  We did not imprison you, nor do we bind you now to this place. Leave or remain if you will, but do not again pretend dominion over a place you have lost - especially to one of the Wild Magic - or we WILL make the choice for you._

The Afanc screamed, a horrible keening sound that mingled with the rumbling in the crater for several minutes, long after the creature had disappeared into the water.

Neither Will, Bran, nor Jane spoke until the last of the ripples had faded.

“Real, that time,” said Bran, as casually as if he’d been commenting on the weather.

“Yeah,” Will still sounded breathless.  To Jane, he asked: “Are you alright?”

Jane stared at him for a moment, mute, the soft petals of the rose clutched in her trembling hands.  “There’s something you’re not telling me.  Always has been, but now it’s worse than ever. Stop protecting me from it.  I _need to know._ ”

“She’s right,” said Bran, resting a hand on Will’s elbow for a moment until he saw Jane looking at him.  He pulled away abruptly and stuffed both hands in his trouser pockets.  “Not knowing is so much worse.  Your lot had that bit wrong.”

“For…some.”  Will’s voice was strained, his eyes anxious. “The Lady,” he said, looking into Jane’s eyes.  Jane felt a flash of recognition and confusion at the same time, which only fueled her frustration.  “She was here, wasn’t she?”

A voice from behind her. Within her. Giving her the melody and later the words. An old woman with a rose on her finger.  “I…I think so.”

“If I show you,” said Will, maintaining constant eye-contact.  “There will be no going back.  You will be fully part of the Wild Magic, a dominion outside of my own.  I don’t know what you will become, or what will happen to you. All I can do is lift the shield that was placed over your memories.  You will become…whatever you are meant to be, whatever that means.  Do you accept this?”

Jane nodded, her mouth dry, her heart pounding. Will took a step backward, then extended his hand toward her, fingers spread.

Her first true, intact memory was of Great Uncle Merry doing the same.

 

* * *

 

Even in dull gray light under a heavily clouded sky, the grave was a sight to behold. Tall and imposing, it was everything Great Uncle Merry had been and everything he would not have wanted.  For, she understood now, as awe-inspiring as his presence had always been, he had rarely drawn attention to himself on purpose.  

There was no date inscribed in the stone, no description, no quotes, only the word LYON in large block letters and above it, a small circle quartered by a cross. Underneath it, unlike everywhere else in the churchyard, there was no coffin.  Jane knelt in the damp grass, feeling space under her knees warm ever-so-slightly to her touch, the earth below her teeming with life.  The sensation gave her strength.

“I know why you did it,” she said to the polished stone.  “You could not have known.  You of the Light, the oldest of the Old Ones, pillar of the High Magic. This was always outside your realm.   Wherever you are now, whatever world you're saving, whatever battles you’re fighting, I hope you,” here her voice started to wobble.  “I hope you understand that the sacrifices you made for this world will not be forgotten.  The Wild Magic remembers.”    

Silence.  Somewhere a crow squawked and a cool breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby tree.  Jane let her words vanish into the sound. After a moment, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, tears prickling her eyes.  Around her, the rolling hills stretched, buzzing with ancient, unfettered power.  Jane could feel it under her skin and in her heartbeat: every plant, every animal, a rough ocean attacking a rocky shoreline, a knotted tree swaying in a wild wind, a lake sparkling in sunlight, a rockfall, a wildfire.

Absently fingering the rose ring on her finger, Jane climbed to her feet, giving the empty gravesite one last look before turning to leave.   

 


End file.
